


daddy issues

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [8]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Bar crawl, Daddy Issues, Drinking, Gen, M/M, Team Red, except there's no driving, i take it back he's more like the hair-holding friend in this, slight alcoholism to deal with grief, wade is basically the DD in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:37:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14877443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Hey let’s kill a man,” Red texted him out of the blue. That was unusual, Red didn’t like to text.“Alright, let’s go,” Wade texted back, just to see what he’d do.(Matt and Wade celebrate Jack's death day.)





	daddy issues

**Author's Note:**

> reference to child abuse in regards to Wade's dad. Please do what you need to to take care of yourselves, as per usual. 
> 
> It's my birthday, so please go have a stupidly fancy cocktail for me tonight friends. Also, the only bar in this which actually exists is Rudy's, and apparently they have free hotdogs? I dunno, someone go check it out and report back.

“Hey let’s kill a man,” Red texted him out of the blue. That was unusual, Red didn’t like to text.

“Alright, let’s go,” Wade texted back, just to see what he’d do.

Red didn’t answer for several hours.

“Andy’s on 54th at 9?” he asked at 5.

Guess they were going hunting in street clothes.

“Alright, sure thing.”

 

 

Andy’s was a liquor store, not a bar; it set the tone for the night. The owner knew Red and told him jokingly not to get into too much trouble with the bottle of whiskey he bought.

They sat up high, where they both felt more comfortable. Less visible. More honest.

Red didn’t fuck with cups, they drank straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth without talking for a good five minutes.

“So who’s notice is up?” Wade finally asked, watching Red watch the city with his unseeing eyes.

“My dad fucking died today,” Red spat; the rage in his throat was burnt by the whiskey.

Wade wasn’t unfamiliar with loss and from what he could gather, Red’s dad hadn’t died that day. That kind of rage was the gravelly, smoldering kind left over years after the funeral. He took a swallow of whiskey for Vanessa.

“Sorry to hear that, man,” he said. Red barked out an ugly laugh.

“That’s all everyone says. I’m sorry for your loss, so sorry for your loss, so _fucking_ sorry.” Wade offered him the whiskey. He took it. “He died for nothing.”

Wade gave him a moment. Red just glared out at the city. He didn’t seem to have anything to follow that up with.

“He the guy we’re killing?” he clarified. Red chuffed out a breath and took another swallow before passing the bottle back.

“Already killed him,” he said with a grin.

Ah.

So that’s how it was.

“He touch you?” Wade asked.

“Fuck no,” Red snapped.

Wade didn’t really know what to do with that or where to go from there. His own dad had been a shithead, a scumbag, the lowest of the low. As such, his measure for fatherhood was entirely bound up with not being That Guy, and he forgot sometimes that some people hated their fathers for normal-people reasons. Daddy never understood. Daddy never bought me a car. Daddy didn’t write me into his will.

“He worked so hard,” Red said in a much softer tone.

Wade didn’t like it.

“Yeah? What’d he do?” He prompted, trying to steer clear of whatever was lying under that particular rock. Red caught on quick and cleared his throat.

“Forget it, I don’t want another I’m sorry. Let’s go kill a man.”

He hopped off the side of the storage container and held a hand up to Wade.

 

 

Wade followed Red into the bar and they had a few drinks before a guy squeezed over and stole Red away. He was only gone for five minutes before Wade decided Red was too far gone to be trusted. He shouldered over to the far back corner to see Red standing, definitely drunk, with crossed arms and a hip jutting out, between the legs of some tech bro. He would not be wooed. The guy who had taken him was way out of his depth and was just then realizing it.

“After that we’ll go—” he trailed off at the sight of Wade’s maimed face.

“No, go on,” he encouraged, “Take him to Barbados, he’ll hate it.”

Red rolled his head over towards him with a smirk. He ducked out from between the guy’s arms and tucked himself up against Wade with the air of a haughty sweet sixteen-year-old at prom.

“Thanks for the drink,” he purred at the bro. He and Wade made their way towards the door.

 

 

“Well that was a bust,” Red bitched out in the street, his hand still wrapped around Wade’s elbow as a guide. Wade didn’t know if he should shrug him off or not; Red was pretty unsteady.

“Hey, Jessica said Rudy’s is half-way decent,” Red remembered, then tightened his grip and dragged Wade back the way they’d come.

 

 

Rudy’s was packed as hell but had damn good hotdogs. Wade set to trying to get one of them and some other carbs into Red before he blacked out.

By then he’d realized that the man they were killing was Matt.

It did something to the pit of his stomach.

He loved to taunt Red, to push his buttons and throw him off guard. Same with Spidey; they were both so much more laid back and tolerant than your average super/vigilante. It made getting a rise of them extra rewarding.

But only he was allowed to do that.

When Peter or Matt got upset and Wade wasn’t the cause of it, it made something burn in the pit of his gut.

How _dare_ someone touch one of his. How _dare_ they.

Usually, there was someone to hit, someone to maim, someone to terrify the living shit out of, but he couldn’t do that here. Not when Red was the one doing the hurting. It was annoying. He shouldn’t have gotten close to either of them, he decided. It made things unnecessarily complicated.

“Where’s Nelson?” he shouted over the music and the chatter and the rattle of ice and glass at the bar. Red paused in charming the bartender and shrugged nonchalantly.

“Didn’t want to be around him tonight,” he shouted back.

Highly unusual.

“Thought you two were all over each other,” Wade said, squeezing up against the bar to let a punk couple past.

Red leaned his chin on his palm and frowned at the wall of liquor before him while he tried to drunk-think it out.

“Fogs always tries to stop me,” he said. Wade had to make him repeat it a few times, half-shouting.

It was so fucking loud.

The roar was making Wade’s head ache more than usual; Christ, he was getting old. They needed to bounce before he burst a capillary (not that it would matter with his healing factor, but it would still be unpleasant). He tapped at Red’s wrist and nudged the basket of French fries into his elbow as a signal to carb-up before they bailed. Red laughed and indulgently picked a few out. He clearly had no intention of eating them.

“I can see why,” Wade told him, “You’re a sloppy drunk.”

Red laughed hard. He dropped the fries back in the basket.

“Let’s go,” he said, “Arizona is open ‘til 2.”

 

 

Wade hadn’t been to Arizona, but he sure as fuck was coming back. He loved a good kitsch-collection. They had non-alcoholic cocktails too, and he ordered a purple one for Red before he could get a word in edgewise.

Red poked at it grumpily.

“Too sweet,” he mumbled. “Bubbles. Mint.”

Wade snorted and sipped his own cocktail. It was orange at the bottom and sticky, plastic pink on top. There was a piece of rock candy chilling in the middle, surrounded by bubbles of carbonation. It was fucking incredible.

“You need a little sweet right now, bud. Gotta cut through all that bitter,” he told him fondly. Red glared and stirred the ice cubes in his drink irritably with his teeny tiny straw. Wade snapped a picture and sent it to Nelson while he suffered.

He got a reply back almost immediately.

 **FN:** Thank you so much, Wade.

Red didn’t seem to notice, or at least care, that he was texting. His drunk brain was entirely focused on menacing the edible flowers on the surface of the soda.

 **WW:** He always like this on daddy’s death day?

 **FN:** It’s been a rough year.

Wade looked up to find that Red had given in and had a go at the drink. He was holding it while he ‘inspected’ the bar. Wade suspected that all those jiggling hula dancers on the register were making a new and intriguing sound.

 **WW:** What time you want him home by?

 **FN:** Smashed but not unconscious.

 **WW:** Alright, 1 more.

“Hey, I know a place,” he told Red over the top of his phone. Red was distracted by the mass of fairy lights tenting down from the center of the ceiling. There were wind chimes scattered about them and occasionally one rang out over the din below. Matt was entranced by the most recent one singing.

“Hey,” Wade touched his arm to get his attention.

“Hm?”

“I know a place,” he repeated.

“Oh, cool.” Red scooped up his jacket, still focused on the windchime. Wade leaned over and put a hand on his elbow to stop him.

“Finish that,” he said, meaning the drink. Red snapped out of it and downed it in one go.

“Lead the way,” he said with a smile.

 

 

Wade took him to L & B’s and told him to pick his last drink wisely. Red grumbled at him but finished the night with a few fingers of Bushmills on ice. It was a pretty specific choice. Wade didn’t comment.

“My dad was a shithead,” he said casually instead, after having forced Red to eat a few of his onion rings. It was hard to tell if he didn’t like them or just didn’t want to be less drunk. He hummed to let Wade know he was listening.

Seven and a half-drink Red was sleepy and affectionate. He was a good version to take back to Nelson.

“He was an actual shit-stain, and I know you’re tired of hearing it, but I’m sorry your old man died,” Wade said.

Red didn’t say anything, just traced his fingers through the condensation on his glass.

“It’s no good in trying to forget, Red.”

“’M not trying to forget.”

It was probably the first honest thing he’d said the entire night, and things were wandering a little too far into daddy issues territory for Wade’s comfort levels. Graphic memories of torture? He got that. Un-escapable memories of war? Entirely empathetic. Absolute disgust/hatred of mankind? Piece of cake.

Daddy Issues? Oh hell no. Get this man a professional. Where the hell was Spidey when you needed him?

Way too young to be in a bar, that’s where. _Fuck._

Wade made Red eat another onion ring to give him a second to remember how to pass for a human being.

“If you ain’t trying to forget,” he decided on, “The hell you drinking your liver into submission for?”

Red shrugged.

“Tryin’ to remember?” he offered, like he wasn’t quite sure either. Wade took a moment to process that while Red played with his drink.

“You miss him?” He ventured. Red didn’t respond right away, still fucking around with the ice in his glass. L & B’s wasn’t as aesthetically or sensually exciting as Arizona had been and Wade was a little thankful for that because it kept Red from drifting off in the middle of meaningful conversation.

“Love ‘im so much,” Red said to his glass. “Died when I was little.”

His face crumpled behind his glasses. It only lasted a second; he took a few big breaths to contain it.

“Everything got so bad after; _I_ got so bad after. E’ery year—s’like every year I find some new way to disappoint ‘im.”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._ Code fucking Rainbow. Wade was not prepared to deal with this. He had his own truckload of daddy issues and they were headed entirely in the opposite direction. There was no common ground here outside the whole Dead Dads nonsense. He needed a hyper-masculine excuse to get the hell out of Dodge.

“S’not him,” Red defended suddenly. Shit, he’d forgotten about the body-reading. “It’s me. I’m pro-projecting? Think that’s the right one. Projecting. I’m projecting on ‘im. He’s just some bones in the-in the—”

“Okay pal, I think you’re done” Wade told him, gently pulling away the glass. Red didn’t fight him, just went loose in the shoulders.

“Yeah,” he agreed, staring into his lap, “Sorry, Dad. I’ll be better.”

He wasn’t talking to Wade.

“Let’s get you home, Red.”

“Okay.”

 

 

Nelson took Red and put him to sleep and thanked Wade profusely.

“He doesn’t talk about him at all if he can help it,” Nelson told him, “Sometimes he’ll talk about his old fights if you prompt him, but anything with feelings is off-limits. It makes his birthday and death day kind of a big deal.”

“His fights?” Wade asked; in the entire six hours he’d spent co-mourning the guy, he’d learned almost nothing about Red’s dad besides he was well and truly dead.  

“Yeah, he was a boxer,” Nelson told him, peering into the other room to make sure Red hadn’t cracked his head open on a corner. “He was pretty well-known in Hell’s Kitchen back in the day. His murder was a pretty big deal.”

Well fucking shit, Red. He’d failed to mention _that_ in their six-hour bar crawl. It kind of changed everything. Well, not everything. Wade was still pissed, only now he was pissed at the universe.

“That’s tough fucking tits,” he told Nelson. Nelson sighed.

“Yeah, tough fucking tits. Listen, I’m gonna put him to bed. Thanks again, Wade. I owe you one.”

“No problem, give him my love while he’s worshipping the porcelain altar, would you?”

Nelson laughed, waved, and closed the door.

Wade went home.

 

 

Spidey abruptly fell of the face of the earth a while later, when Wade needed him for a strategic operation involving two hundred pounds of pennies. He found him at home, moodily tapping a pen against his desk and sorting through something on his computer.

He refused to even listen to Wade’s proposal.

“Not in the mood, Wade,” he grouched, leaving no room for argument.

Wade took it for what it was. Spidey was allowed to be a bad-tempered teenager sometimes. Anyways, Red was always down for mischief after dark.

Spidey sent him a text later that said, “Sorry, just a bad day. My uncle’s birthday is coming up.”

Dead fucking dads, yo.

 

 

His own dad’s death day hit him like a truck. It hadn’t for a long-ass time, mostly because he’d refused to let it.

He decided to celebrate.

“Hello dearest, darling, pumpkin-butter,” he sang into the phone. Peter giggled.

“What’s up, Wade?” he asked, all traces of teenage angst vanquished.

“Something very exciting. Would you be interested in desecrating a bastard’s memory with me?”

Peter laughed.

“Does it involve bodily fluids? Because if yes, we’ve talked about this.”

“No fluids, just cake. Streamers, poppers, maybe some alcohol, not for you though, those are adults-only beverages. I’ll get ya’ll wee ones a bottle of 7-Up.”

“Okay, sure Wade, whatever makes you happy.”

“Excellent, bring friends and chips and dip.”

He called Red and demanded he drop everything to pay him back for his miserable bar-crawl. Red was embarrassed for having had An Emotion in front of Wade and agreed.

“You want me to bring anything?” he asked.

“Mmmm, I’m trying to think of something that really captures the ‘fuck you and the horse you rode in on’ vibe but just can’t decide,” Wade told him cheerfully.

“Get that on the cake,” Red told him, the genius, “And then let’s ask Barton. He’s got armloads of casual revenge ideas.”

Hawkeye suggested that they put stickers of the bastard’s face in public urinals before the party (Wade had promised Peter no bodily fluids, so it really did need to come first) and then, beautiful man that he was, he said that everyone should have to come up with a ‘die, shithead’ toast/blessing. The Black Widow, he declared, was the best at them and had once ended a charity event by blessing everyone to be stabbed in between the thumb and forefinger and then-after plagued by mosquitoes and ticks. She drank to their future suffering.

Wade loved it. He decided to open the field, not just to his shithead, but to any and all who had wronged members of the party.

 _The old man would have wanted it literally any other way_ , Wade thought with a tear in his eye, it was perfect.

Some dads deserved to have their memories burnt at the stake.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please drink responsibly friends


End file.
